After Hours
by miistical
Summary: There is only a certain type of person who finds themselves walking home at two in the morning. Out of being a drunk, a college student, or a very badly timed walk of shame, Harry was sadly neither the former, nor the latter.


CenedraRiva's prompt from the tomarry discord server

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There is only a certain type of person who finds themselves walking home at two in the morning. Out of being a drunk, a college student, or a very badly timed walk of shame, Harry was sadly neither the former, nor the latter.

" _God_ , I should've listened to Hermione," Harry muttered to himself. He'd never admit it to her face, of course, but that didn't make his best friend any less right. "At least now I have a full day to _die_."

Harry pressed his knuckles into his eyes, slowing down as he did so. He dragged his hands down, his fingertips digging into the dark bags beneath his eyes, and glanced over to the empty park by him. Harry paused, fingers still pressing into his skin, his glasses pushed into his hair, and sighed.

Changing course, Harry headed over to the swings. He was their usual patron while he let Padfoot run around, making a ruckus as the old dog loved to do. This time, though, it wasn't a dog that got Harry moving.

A man was slumped over in the swing that Harry usually sat on. And, while Harry wouldn't call himself _completely_ bent, he had to admit that the guy was remarkably handsome—and _definitely_ not from around the area. Harry would have remembered him, that's for certain.

Feeling more like a creeper by the minute, but honestly too tired to care about silly things like morals and personal boundaries, Harry leaned forward. The stranger was extremely pale, but that could just have been Harry comparing him to his own much darker skin. The paleness strangely suit the sleeping man, though; his hair was just dark enough to make it seem like he stepped right out of an old fashioned movie.

Leaning back and forth, Harry let his eyes roam over the man's face. He eyed the man's jawline with just a little bit of envy, but Harry eventually sighed and rocked back out of the guy's space. He silently mourned his nonexistent chance with the man and then promptly set to figuring out on how to wake him.

Grimace already forming, Harry lifted a knee and gently kicked the sleeping man. How he managed to stay completely upright on the swing set mildly impressed Harry, but the college student was more concerned about him getting mugged than anything else.

"Well, Mister Handsome Face," Harry sighed after the fifth kick, "I guess it's time to be an arsehole."

In one smooth movement, Harry kicked the guy in the chest and straight off the swing. Harry winced at the thud the stranger's back made with the ground, before inching away from the now awake man's flailing limbs.

"What in the good fuckening is _this_?! Yaxley, I swear on your whore of a mother that—!"

Eyebrows closer to his hairline than his actual eyes, Harry just stared. Mister Handsome Face was having the time of his life railing on a guy who wasn't there. Harry had the sinking thought that _of course_ the hottest guy he's seen in the past six months just had to be an absolute twat. Under Harry's watch, the guy finally came back to himself, spitting and cursing the entire way, but he did manage to stand on his own.

And then managed to fall back down.

Harry sighed and readjusted his bag. ' _Guy must have gotten himself absolutely plastered if he's_ still _drunk,_ ' Harry thought.

Stepping forward, Harry crouched down and held out a hand. "Hi, my name's Harry, and I'm here to make sure you don't die."

Handsome Face squinted at his hand in thinly veiled suspicion before squinting up at his face. Handsome Face's handsome face broke into a full blown smile and he swayed forward, slightly slurring, "My my, you have such _beautiful_ eyes."

Harry got out an intelligible, "Um." right before Handsome Face grabbed Harry's hand and pressed a kiss to the back of it. Blush slowly making its way visible across Harry's cheeks, all he could do was gape as the other man fluttered his eyelashes at him.

"My name is Tom Riddle and you, _Harry_ , are absolutely gorgeous." Tom's eyes were practically black in the light and Harry felt his heart skip approximately five beats.

Spluttering so hard Harry feared he would swallow his tongue, he pulled his hand back as if he had been burned. Tom's face changed from a smile to a leer and he swayed even further into Harry's personal space. Before Tom could open his mouth to fluster Harry even further, Harry grabbed Tom by the shoulders and pulled him back up. Cursing his need to help people into eternal damnation, Harry flung one of Tom's arms over his shoulders, and helped the stumbling man back out of the park.

"Alright, Tom, let's get you back home, alright? Can you point me to where that is?" Harry asked, hoping to distract Tom from any further embarrassment.

"Hmm, the - the dorms? Yes, I sleep there now," Tom murmured into Harry's hair.

Harry huffed as Tom's entire weight tried to topple him. "Which dorms? C'mon Tom, which dorms are you staying in?"

Tom's face lit up and he lurched forward as he thrust his arm out in front of them. "Hogwarts! With that bastard Albus 'too many _bloody_ names for polite company' Dumbledore!" Tom spat, "Load of bollocks, that man, trying to kick me off campus just because I was _right_ about his class being utterly _useless_!"

Slack jawed, Harry watched as Tom got progressively more and more heated. While Harry had only ever had pleasant, though admittedly awkward and stilted, conversations with the professor, it seemed that Tom had a never ending list of complaints. Harry eventually tuned Tom out when he realized that the other man was very much _not done_ with the many grievances he had against the eccentric Latin teacher.

By the time they had gotten back onto Hogwarts campus, Tom had taken to muttering obscenities into Harry's hair. Harry himself couldn't tell if he was even more tired by the whole thing or just too amused to take up a defense against the professors Tom had declared his undying hatred for.

(If Harry was being honest, however, he completely agreed with Tom on Trelawney, Umbridge, and Slughorn. The faster each of them retired, the faster Harry could get off Xanax.)

"Alright now, Tom?" Harry shook him to attention. "What dorms are you staying in?"

Harry fully doubted that Tom was in the Hufflepuff dorms and he would have _definitely_ recalled seeing him around the Gryffindor dorms, so he had a fifty-fifty chance. And, if he was at least half as smart as what Hermione said he was, then Tom would be in—

"Slytherin, of course! Only the best that Hogwarts has to offer to its heir!"

' _Yep,_ ' Harry mused, ' _called that one._ '

Sighing, Harry shuffled the two of them together once again as he set out for the Slytherin dorms. Of course his new buddy would be in the farthest dorms from the main campus, but Harry had enjoyed himself enough to not mind the extra ten minutes.

Tom hummed into the crook of Harry's neck, snapping Harry out of his thoughts. When Harry glanced over, Tom was back to staring at him. "You know - Harry, dear, you would make a good part of my group, you know."

Harry cleared his throat, grateful that his dark skin hid his fast approaching flush. "I wouldn't know about that, Tom."

"No, no, no—you'd be a _great_ recruit, just you see!"

"Eh, well, clubs aren't really my thing—"

"Club?!" Tom appeared sincerely affronted. Harry almost laughed right in his face. "No, you see, my group and I we're - we're going to take over the _world_!"

Harry bit his lip, trying in vein to keep his snickering to himself. Thankfully, Tom didn't notice.

"Just-just you _wait_! We're a lil' unknown now, but we'll be the biggest thing you've ever seen—ever!" Tom turned and fully draped his upper body across the breadth of Harry's shoulders. "See, you see? If you join now, it'll be extraordinary in a few years! People will be begging to be a part and you—you'd be there since, well, not from the beginning now, no of course not, _but_ you'll be so high up that no one would bother you!"

All Harry could get out was a wheezy, "Oh my _God_ , please - please _stop_ , I can't _take this_."

It was at that point, just a few meters from the entrance of the Slytherin dorms, that someone finally came to relieve Harry of his hilarious burden. A gangling man ran out towards them, shouting, "Oh thank bloody _fuck_ you found him!"

Tom immediately turned from Harry's throat and hissed, "Shut up, Barney, you're too fucking loud!"

"Sorry, Tom," Barney said, his voice significantly lower. He turned to Harry. "I'm real sorry about this, you'll be compensated for his, uh, behavior, I swear."

Harry stared and then began cackling, his knees threatening to give out. He looked up at Barney's confused face and said, "Look man, I just got back from the library at two in the fucking morning to find _him_ , this is hardly the worst thing that could've happened. Plus, he's hysterical when he goes off. I think I learned a few new curses from him."

Barney just shook his head; Harry laughed in his face. Still snickering, Harry maneuvered Tom over to Barney's shoulders rather than his own. However, before Harry could step back and say goodbye, Tom reached back out.

Harry huffed wryly, his hands already pushing Tom back, but not before Tom grabbed hold of Harry's sweater and reeled him in. Tom took no time in kissing Harry breathless, Barney squawking behind the both of them.

Tom leaned back and smacked his lips, eyeing the absolute mess he had made of Harry. He then looked Harry in the eyes, his own dark eyes completely clear and focused, and smirked.

"It was an absolute _pleasure_ to meet you, Harry Potter," Tom purred before kissing him one last time.

After the kiss was a blur of Barney dragging Tom back into the Slytherin dorms, yelling something over his shoulder about not suing them for sexual harassment. Harry then made his way back to the Gryffindor dorms, his head filled with cotton. His entrance back into the unit was met with the regular pitying gazes of other students too used to test season's occasional student from the void.

Harry slowly returned to his own room, Ron snoring away heartily, and dumped all of his stuff by his desk. He stripped quickly and flopped back into bed, making a mental note to tell his friends all about his meeting with a certain Mister Tom "Handsome Face" Riddle.

' _Tom Riddle, huh?_ ' Harry thought to himself, his mind already slipping into sleep. ' _Hmm... wait a minute!_ ' Harry's eyes snapped back open.

' _How did he know my last name?!_ '


End file.
